The manufacturer would have access to a large data base of incidents and accidents for their aircraft and from this would not have lightly published this recommendation. Nor would have the NTSB in its warning. Best of luck with your mixture cuts in future. Don't tell CASA though...
The Piper Seminole Information Manual at Section 10, entitled Training Tips states:
“Experience has shown that the training advantage gained by pulling the mixture control or turning off fuel to simulate engine failure at low altitude, is not worth the risk assumed, therefore it is recommended that instead of using either of these procedures to simulate loss of power at low altitude, the throttle be retarded slowly to idle position”.
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Again, the number of misconceptions manifested by the material in that post is saddening.
I'll bet that the 'use the throttle rather than mixture control' crowd believe that:
- Pulling the mixture completely shuts off fuel to the engine, and
- This is true for all engine/airframe combinations.
Both are demonstrably wrong generalisations. However, the demonstration requires an understanding of how the different fuel systems fitted to different engines and different aircraft behave differently. Better, instead, to stick with the blissful ignorance that pulling the throttle will always be less risky than pulling the mixture to simulate an engine failure, no matter the aircraft and no matter the engine.
The only real-life failure of a piston engine to respond after a simulated engine failure of which I am aware was simulated by pulling the throttle. An understanding of the specific fuel system and specific engine fitted to that specific aircraft made it obvious why that method of simulation was no more likely than pulling the mixture to end in a failure to respond when trying to obtain full power. (Not a carby icing problem, BTW. Injected engines don't have a carby.)
Procedures on some aircraft require an electric fuel pump to be on for e.g. Take-off. Procedures on other aircraft warn against the use of an electric fuel pump for e.g. Take-off. How could both be correct, if all fuel systems on all piston engines and all aircraft are the same?
Engine designers and manufacturers, airframe designers and manufacturers, engine maintainers, airframe maintainers, regulators, accident investigators and insurers all have a vested interest in saying that if only the pilot had done something different from what they did, the damage/accident/incident would not have occurred. The difference between correlation and causation is often (conveniently) overlooked.